September 2012 FIDE Rating List

The main news in the top 10 list for September is that Hikaru Nakamura gains two places to claim the #5 spot, swapping places with Sergey Karjakin, and above the current world champion Vishy Anand at #6.

Some of the biggest movers on the list are due to the results at the 2012 Biel tournament, with Winner Wang Hao gaining 8 places at #15, and Anish Giri gaining 15 places at #20.

World #1 Magnus Carlsen gained 6 rating points at Biel and his new rating of 2843 Elo is just 8 points away from Garry Kasparov's record 1999/2000 peak of 2851 Elo.

The live rankings updated on a daily basis can be found at www.2700chess.com. The current live list is changing rapidly as results from the Olympiad are coming thick and fast!

The top 100 ranked players:

#

Name

Nat

Elo

1

Carlsen, Magnus

NOR

2843

2

Aronian, Levon

ARM

2816

3

Kramnik, Vladimir

RUS

2797

4

Radjabov, Teimour

AZE

2788

5

Nakamura, Hikaru

USA

2783

6

Anand, Viswanathan

IND

2780

7

Karjakin, Sergey

RUS

2778

8

Caruana, Fabiano

ITA

2773

9

Ivanchuk, Vassily

UKR

2769

10

Morozevich, Alexander

RUS

2758

11

Grischuk, Alexander

RUS

2754

12

Topalov, Veselin

BUL

2752

13

Svidler, Peter

RUS

2747

14

Kamsky, Gata

USA

2746

15

Wang, Hao

CHN

2742

16

Gelfand, Boris

ISR

2738

17

Gashimov, Vugar

AZE

2737

18

Leko, Peter

HUN

2737

19

Jobava, Baadur

GEO

2734

20

Giri, Anish

NED

2730

21

Tomashevsky, Evgeny

RUS

2730

22

Ponomariov, Ruslan

UKR

2729

23

Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar

AZE

2729

24

Dominguez Perez, Leinier

CUB

2725

25

Jakovenko, Dmitry

RUS

2724

26

Adams, Michael

ENG

2722

27

Volokitin, Andrei

UKR

2718

28

Andreikin, Dmitry

RUS

2718

29

Fressinet, Laurent

FRA

2714

30

Shirov, Alexei

LAT

2714

31

Bruzon Batista, Lazaro

CUB

2713

32

Wojtaszek, Radoslaw

POL

2713

33

Almasi, Zoltan

HUN

2713

34

McShane, Luke J

ENG

2713

35

Bologan, Viktor

MDA

2712

36

Naiditsch, Arkadij

GER

2712

37

Riazantsev, Alexander

RUS

2712

38

Sasikiran, Krishnan

IND

2707

39

Bacrot, Etienne

FRA

2705

40

Korobov, Anton

UKR

2705

41

Movsesian, Sergei

ARM

2705

42

Nepomniachtchi, Ian

RUS

2704

43

Areshchenko, Alexander

UKR

2702

44

Malakhov, Vladimir

RUS

2700

45

Moiseenko, Alexander

UKR

2699

46

Sokolov, Ivan

NED

2699

47

Vitiugov, Nikita

RUS

2699

48

Polgar, Judit

HUN

2698

49

Short, Nigel D

ENG

2698

50

Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime

FRA

2697

51

Vallejo Pons, Francisco

ESP

2697

52

Ding, Liren

CHN

2694

53

Le, Quang Liem

VIE

2693

54

Rublevsky, Sergei

RUS

2693

55

Sargissian, Gabriel

ARM

2693

56

Wang, Yue

CHN

2691

57

Navara, David

CZE

2691

58

Van Wely, Loek

NED

2691

59

Harikrishna, P.

IND

2690

60

Efimenko, Zahar

UKR

2689

61

Cheparinov, Ivan

BUL

2689

62

Georgiev, Kiril

BUL

2687

63

Akopian, Vladimir

ARM

2687

64

Sutovsky, Emil

ISR

2687

65

Kryvoruchko, Yuriy

UKR

2686

66

Berkes, Ferenc

HUN

2685

67

Eljanov, Pavel

UKR

2684

68

Kasimdzhanov, Rustam

UZB

2684

69

Bu, Xiangzhi

CHN

2683

70

Inarkiev, Ernesto

RUS

2683

71

Alekseev, Evgeny

RUS

2682

72

Edouard, Romain

FRA

2678

73

Dreev, Aleksey

RUS

2677

74

Ragger, Markus

AUT

2677

75

Bauer, Christian

FRA

2676

76

Laznicka, Viktor

CZE

2675

77

Gyimesi, Zoltan

HUN

2674

78

Tiviakov, Sergei

NED

2674

79

Grachev, Boris

RUS

2672

80

Onischuk, Alexander

USA

2672

81

Ni, Hua

CHN

2671

82

Zvjaginsev, Vadim

RUS

2671

83

Balogh, Csaba

HUN

2668

84

So, Wesley

PHI

2667

85

Zhigalko, Sergei

BLR

2667

86

Li, Chao b

CHN

2665

87

Najer, Evgeniy

RUS

2664

88

Gareev, Timur

USA

2663

89

Potkin, Vladimir

RUS

2663

90

Gharamian, Tigran

FRA

2663

91

Matlakov, Maxim

RUS

2663

92

Nielsen, Peter Heine

DEN

2662

93

Kurnosov, Igor

RUS

2660

94

Jones, Gawain C B

ENG

2658

95

Negi, Parimarjan

IND

2658

96

Motylev, Alexander

RUS

2658

97

Fridman, Daniel

GER

2657

98

Petrosian, Tigran L.

ARM

2657

99

Meier, Georg

GER

2656

100

Gupta, Abhijeet

IND

2654

101

Bartel, Mateusz

POL

2654

.

The women's top ten is virtually unchanged since most of the players didn't play any games during the period. One of the biggest movers on the list was Natalia Pogonina who gained 20 Elo points by winning the women's championship of Russia, and now ranks #26.

Anand has played 2 of the last 10 Olympiads, Kramnik 4 of the last 8, Topalov 3 of the last 6, Carlsen 4 of the last 5 (saying that he wants to play again next time). This time none of the other Norwegian GMs participated and Carlsen preferred to take a break rather than spend a couple of weeks playing 2400s.

Not only Magnus, but Anand, Koneru and possibly some other players also do not play at Olympiad. Probably they have their own reason. I understand Magnus. One soldier does not make an army. Being the strongest at olympiad and not playing with the highest rated, due to weak team sertainly is not appealing. He would need to win all games in order not to lose first rating spot. Remember how Fisher lost 5 points when he becaome world champion, and that seems crazy.

Well, ratings are about results, so the sudden jump means that Naka has been able to get better results than Anand as of late. Of course, since Naka has just superseded Anand, it might not last, so we probably don't have enough information to determine the better player. As fabelhaft said, though, just look at Anand's results. He hasn't had many stunning performances recently, and even in the WCC against the much lower rated Boris Gelfand he couldn't get a plus score.

"Anand is much much better than Nakamura but the rating list says otherwise!"

Anand does feel like a stronger player than Nakamura, but it's been a while since he showed it. In the last tournament where both played Anand didn't reach a plus score while Nakamura scored +3 and won against Anand (all their other games have been drawn). Just the last year or two it feels as if Anand, Kramnik and Topalov have gotten clearly weaker while the younger players have gotten much stronger, not only Carlsen and Aronian but also Radjabov, Nakamura, Karjakin and Caruana.

Carlsen breaking Garry's record is frankly not that impressive. Ratings in the top 10 and in general are much higher then they used to be at Garry's time. If Carlsen breaks 2900-2920 then I'll be willing to say he has a a better peak rating then Garry.

Since the next closest guy to Garry was like 60 points or more under Garry's rating, its not really a fair comparison. Garry would lose a lot more points for a loss and gain much fewer for a win. That's not the case for Carlsen in his era there were even 4, 2800+ players at one point. Making it much easier to boost his rating. Due to rating inflation.

Also for those not willing to believe in rating inflation look up some articles on chessbase. There were like 3-4 of them with top mathematical chess minds trying to figure out if there was inflation, which it does look to be the case.

None the less Carlsen is the best right now, but hopefully Aronian closes that gap

I guess if you are good you are going to have haters. There is no denying GM Carlsen's powerful chess strength. He is number one for a reason. I like how he was compared to the modern day legend Capablanca.

Help us finish translating:

We are working hard to make Chess.com available in over 70 languages. Check back over the year as we develop the technology to add more, and we will try our best to notify you when your language is ready for translating!